


Bunhead Babies

by usuallyproperlyhydrated



Category: Bunheads
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6635191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usuallyproperlyhydrated/pseuds/usuallyproperlyhydrated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remember that time I wrote like 50k in Bunheads fanfiction? It's time to go back to those roots. Also I told Jon I would write him Bunheads fanfic for Christmas and I started and I never finished. So if I put it here I will shame myself into finishing it.</p><p>Anyway, the Bunheads gang do the "take care of a robot baby to promote abstience as a form of sexual education" thing.  Hilarity and good times ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s not today.”

“It’s totally today.”

“No way, it can’t be!”

“What are you arguing about?” Sasha asked, sliding into her usual place at the lunch table.

Melanie and Ginny ignored Sasha and continued bickering.

“Mel, it totally says it’s today on the syllabus,” Ginny said.

“Who actually reads the syllabus?” Mel threw her hands in the air. “I always thought that teachers were required by school code to tell us about important assignments coming up.”

“Boo? Little help here?” Sasha turned to Boo who was carefully drizzling dressing on her salad.

“They’re arguing about whether or not today is the day that Mr. Beckstead is going to give us the babies,” Boo answered promptly.

“That sounds illegal,” Sasha drawled. “No matter how you dice it.”

“Not _real_ babies,” Ginny said with an exasperated sigh. “And he’s not going to impregnate us either. Remember? It’s that portion of health class where they’re trying to scare us into being abstinent so they’re giving us robot babies to take care of for the weekend?”

The words vaguely rang a bell in Sasha’s head and she nodded. “Oh, that’s right. The archaic and completely gender stereotypical exercise where we get paired up with some boy from the class and he won’t have to do anything and we’ll do all the work but we’ll both get the same grade.”

“That’s the one.” Melanie popped a fry in her mouth. “But it’s not today, so we don’t have to stress about who we’ll be paired with like Ginny’s been doing all day.”

“I have not been stressing all day!” Ginny protested. “I’ve merely been drawing out detailed predictions of what will happen if I’m paired with certain boys and trying to figure out if Mr. Beckstead will let us choose our own partners or if he’ll pair us randomly or if he’ll pair us based on how much we’ve annoyed him.”

“And it is today,” said Boo, pushing a piece of paper across the table to Melanie and Ginny. “You were right, Ginny—it’s on the syllabus.”

“I told you!”

“I swear I never got one of these,” said Mel, inspecting it closely.

“Of course you did,” Ginny said. “You were probably just too busy ogling at Cozette to remember to put it in your backpack when they were first handed out.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve still got you guys to tell me when important things are coming up _and_ I’m dating Cozette now, so who’s the real winner here?” Mel asked. A goofy grin spread over her face. If she’d been the type of person to gush unabashedly, she would have made some comment about how it had been the best two months and four days of her life since Cozette agreed to go out with her.

“Speaking of your hot girlfriend, where is she?” Sasha asked.

“Her parents took her on a surprise trip to Bali,” Melanie explained. “She’ll be gone for the next week or so. Which sucks because we’d totally rock the hell out of this fake baby assignment.”

“Really?” Ginny raised an eyebrow. “Miss ‘I-once-shot-a-deer-to-put-it-out-of-its-misery’ Cozette doesn’t exactly seem like the maternal type.”

“She’s good at everything. And I mean everything. Except for jenga. The girl blows at jenga for some reason. And this assignment isn’t about being maternal. It’s about picking up the robot baby when it cries and putting your plastic bracelet over its sensor so it stops. Piece of cake.”

“Do you think Mr. Beckstead would have let you and Cozette be a pair?” Boo asked. “Since you’re, you know…”

“Two girls?” Mel shrugged. “I don’t know. He maybe walked in on us making out in his classroom once or twice and he didn’t seem to mind except we were on his desk.”

“Mel, tell me that didn’t happen.” Ginny massaged her temples.

“Um…”

“Letting you mack on his desk is one thing,” Sasha pointed out. “Letting you break heteronormative norms for an assignment is another.”

“Aren’t there an uneven number of girls and guys in the class?” Boo asked.

“Yes.” Ginny pulled out a small notebook that had loopy, cramped handwriting all over the page it was opened to. “There are twenty-five of us in the class and there are only ten guys and fifteen girls. Even if we factor in the fact that Cozette is gone, that still leaves four of us without male partners.”

“Four of us like four of us?” Sasha gestured between them.

“Well, whoever is left when the partner choosing ends. Depending on how Beckstead assigns partners.”

“If we can choose our own partners, we should just choose each other,” Sasha said. “Boo, you and I could pair up and Ginny, you and Mel could pair up. That way you won’t get stuck with Weird Derek or Stenchy Kyle, and we’ve all already pretty much got the same schedule anyway.”

“I’m in,” said Melanie.

“Me, too.” Ginny shut her notebook with an air of finality and relief. Melanie might not always be the most responsible person, but at least she would pull her weight if Ginny was orchestrating things.

“Boo?”

“Well, Carl would be more comfortable if I was paired with you instead of another guy in the class…” Boo said slowly.

“Then it’s settled,” Sasha said.

Except that it wasn’t settled. Mr. Beckstead had indeed pre-assigned pairs prior to going to class that day. And as Ginny had suspected, he had paired them according to how much they had annoyed him since the beginning of the semester.

Since Sasha had gone on a fifteen minute rant about how girls should be taught what it felt like to be aroused—everyone knew about boners for dudes but why didn’t they talk about how girls get wet down there?—she had ended up at the very end of the list. She was paired with Stenchy Kyle, who couldn’t even look at her without needing to put a book in his lap.

The others hadn’t fared much better.

“I’m sorry, _what_?” Ginny said furiously as Mr. Beckstead handed her a baby.

“Since we have an uneven ratio of girls to guys,” he said in a tone, coupled with his patchy goatee and Game of Thrones t-shirt, that betrayed him as desperate to appear cool and relevant, “some of you girls are going to have to be single moms.”

“Okay, but what if instead of being single moms, we were just lesbians?” Mel asked, crossing her arms. “Because, psych! Some of us are! Isn’t it better for the baby to have two parents to split the load instead of one?”

“Hey, I’m not about to make a political statement.” He held his hands up. “It’s not my fault there aren’t enough guys or that Paradise is a conservative town. If I let you ladies co-parent with other ladies, there might be a riot.”

Ginny stood up from her desk. “Screw you for thinking that letting a baby have two parents instead of just one is a political statement. It’s freaking common sense.”

“I’m sorry, Ginny, but my hands are tied. Sit down or I’ll write you up.”

Ginny tapped her toes impatiently, trying to decide whether or not it would be worth it to unleash an onslaught of fury on him. But Sasha already had the situation well in hand. She motioned the teacher over to her desk with a jerk of her head and handed him a note. He read it, his eyes widening. Sasha smiled sweetly.

“Fine.” Mr. Beckstead said. “Sasha, you can pair up with Boo. Ginny and Mel can be partners.”

“What about me?” asked Stenchy Kyle.

“You’re with Brenda.” He returned to the front of the classroom. “Now, listen carefully because I’m not going to explain the project twice…”


	2. Chapter 2

“How did you get him to agree to it?” Boo asked Sasha, tenderly tucking their fake baby boy in his car seat when class was over.

Sasha made a lip-zipping gesture and refused to say another word until all four of them were out in the parking lot, trying to figure out how to strap two car seats in the back of her BMW.

“He’s got a gay brother,” Sasha said, turning the ignition. “My dad went on a date with him a while back and I told him that I’d tell his brother that he was being an annoying bigot. And that my mom’s an honorary member of the school board so I could guarantee that she would back him up in front of the PTA if it came to that.”

“Do you think your mom would really do that?” Melanie asked.

“Hell no. But I’m sure it will be fine,” Sasha said casually. “I’m sure she won’t mind me being a lesbian for a weekend. She probably won’t even notice.”

Especially since Sasha had been a lesbian from the womb and her mother had never said anything. Probably because Sasha had done a good job of bearding it up since the prospect was so daunting to herself. She was just now coming to terms with it, seeing how her friends had reacted when Melanie had come out. Not that Mel had officially come out or anything. She’d just told them that she was dating Cozette and everybody had rolled with it. Even Boo, who was notoriously anxious anytime anything changed.

A grating robotic cry rose up from the backseat.

“Whose baby is that?” Sasha asked in the rearview mirror.

“I can’t tell.” Mel was peering into the baby carriers. “They’re both kind of close together.”

“Is that the hungry cry?” Boo craned her head around from the front seat. “Or is it the one he told us it does when it needs a diaper change?”

“It’s ours and I think she’s hungry,” said Ginny, putting her bracelet over the baby’s mouth sensor. The noise stopped.

“Ugh, is that what it’s going to be like all weekend?” Sasha asked.

“Pretty much,” Boo answered. “But if you want, we can take care of Jeremy together tonight and I’ll have him tomorrow and then you can have him Sunday.”

“Who the hell is Jeremy?”

“Our baby!” Boo’s cheeks turned pink. “Well, not our baby. The one we’re taking care of… I thought Jeremy was a nice name. But we can change it if you have something better.”

Sasha shot Boo a sideways glance. “Nah, I think Jeremy’s fine. And we should take care of him together like real parents.” She didn’t say “like yours” even though it was true because she thought it might be too much of a bummer. Of the two of them, Boo was the one who had a functioning set of parents. Sasha couldn’t remember her own parents agreeing on anything except ballet.

Speaking of ballet, Madam Fanny was less than thrilled about their assignment.

“What on God’s green earth is that monstrosity?” she asked, surveying the baby that Boo was cradling.

“It’s something for school,” Sasha answered for Boo. “Tanya and Alice did it last year and you were fine with it.”

“Was I? That doesn’t sound like something I would be okay with…”

“It’s to promote abstinence,” Mel said helpfully.

“What do you need abstinence for?” Michelle strolled up and slung her arm over Mel’s shoulder. “If you and your girlfriend do the do, there’ll be no round belly or squalling infant coming from it, you know what I’m saying?”

“Michelle, if you’re done making inappropriate comments about my students’ sex lives, you’re in charge of the abominations,” Fanny commanded. “I won’t have them serve as a distraction while my dancers try to learn this choreography.”

Thankfully the babies didn’t do much else besides sit there while Michelle glared at them suspiciously. When it became apparent that they weren’t going to spontaneously combust or anything, she sat back and watched the dancers. Boo and Sasha had been given equally-weighted roles in this ballet and they were dancing together better than ever. In fact, they had both qualified at the Joffrey auditions, thanks in no small part to the fact that they were allowed to audition as a pair. Ginny and Mel hadn’t auditioned this year, as Ginny was certain that she was only going to keep dancing as a hobby and Mel had broken her collarbone doing roller derby the week before the audition.

It was sad for Michelle to think that her girls—because of course she thought of them as her girls, what with all of them coming to her for advice and Sasha crashing at her place sometimes and Boo asking to borrow her New York Ballet workout DVD and talking to Mel about sexuality being a spectrum and taking Ginny to the dentist to get an emergency crown put in when her mom was busy doing a showing—would all be off at college next year. Although she was abysmal at paperwork, she helped them fill out applications and write essays and even forged a reference letter or two.

And now here they were with robot babies. Would she ever be able to keep up with time’s breakneck pace?

“Michelle, are you crying?” Sasha asked, amused.

Rehearsal had finished and Sasha and the other three girls were standing around her in a half circle, sweaty and happy.

“I got smoke in my eyes,” Michelle said defensively. “Matisse must have been singeing her ribbons.”

“I was not! I’m not even allowed to use matches, my mom makes me use clear nail polish!” was Matisse’s indignant reply.

“It was definitely Matisse’s fault.” Michelle made a less-than-surreptitious dab at her tears. “So, babies. Robot babies. Preparing you to be an adult. How’s that going?”

“It’s fine,” said Mel, putting her sensor bracelet back on. “We’ve only had them for like an hour, though.”

“Do these things wake up in the middle of the night like the real deal?”

“We’re not sure yet,” said Ginny. “Mr. Beckstead hinted that that might be a possibility.”

“As long as they don’t spit up or throw up or have blowouts or scream or pull hair, I think we’ll be okay,” said Boo wearily.

“The newest Jordan family member isn’t pulling his weight yet, I see,” said Michelle.

“I don’t think he ever will,” groaned Boo. “He goes through ten onesies a day. I keep trying to convince my mom that we should just let him be naked until he learns to use the toilet, but she said that she’d get the CPS called on her.”

“Speaking of clothes,” said Ginny, “Mel, we need to get our baby out of this gross onesie stat. It’s been handled by a decade of disgusting teenagers and I bet Mr. Beckstead has never once washed it. I wonder if Truly makes baby clothes.”

“Ginny, we are not buying a tailored wardrobe for our robot.”

“Just one outfit? Look at her.” Ginny held up the plastic baby which did indeed look a little ragged in its graying onesie. “She looks like a baby you’d find in a dumpster because the mother was mentally unstable and mistook it for a moldy burrito. And, while I’m not planning on having children for a very long time, since I had no choice in having this baby, I will not raise a derelict infant, even if it’s only for three days. Plus I’m your wife and you have to do what I say.”

“Wait, what does being my wife have to do with any of it? Because if that’s the case, I’m _your_ wife and you have to do what _I_ say.”

“And here we see, ladies and gentlemen, the homosexual agenda crumbling before our very eyes,” said Sasha. “How on earth can a marriage between two adults thrive when they can’t use ‘I’m your wife and you have to do what I say’ to settle arguments? Wake up, America.”

“Well, you kids have fun! I’m off to blow off some steam in Oxnard. I’d invite you along, but where would you find a sitter at this late hour?” Michelle laughed, then stopped, remembering her status as the adult of the group. “But seriously, that’s what it will be like when you have kids, so use protection, okay? Even you.” She pointed at Mel. “Not necessarily the anti-pregnancy stuff, but the stuff that keeps you from getting STDs. That’s a different kind of hell.”

“You got it.” Mel gave her a salute.

“Whatever, Michelle.” Sasha rolled her eyes.

“So can we go or not?” Ginny asked Mel after Michelle had taken off.

“Yeah, okay. Just one though. And if it’s more than ten dollars I’m out of there.”

“You’re the best wife,” Ginny said sweetly, hoisting the baby’s car seat up onto her hip.

“Damn right. You guys wanna join us?”

“Nah,” said Sasha. “I’ve got a washing machine at my place and I have to do a load anyway. Plus if Boo has anything to say about it, Jeremy will probably be naked all weekend anyway.”

 

+++++

 

Melanie wasn’t sure how this had ended up happening. She’d agreed to go to Sparkles to get their baby—name still undecided since Mel wanted to name her “Baby Splice” and Ginny wanted to name her after herself—a new outfit and had been in the middle of the most boring shopping experience of her life when Cozette called.

“Hey babe!” She answered the Facetime call with a huge grin on her face. “I guess there’s some decent internet in Bali then?”

“Not too bad.” Cozette returned Mel’s grin, which made Mel’s heart do a dozen flips. She squinted her brown eyes at the screen. “Are you at Sparkles? On purpose?”

“I’m with Ginny.” Mel turned the phone around so that Cozette could see her tiny blonde best friend mulling over a onesie with ducks printed on it and one that looked like a tiny blazer. “Say hi to my girlfriend, weirdo.”

“Hi Cozette,” said Ginny absently. After a second she perked up and held the onesies up to the phone’s camera. “Hey, since your giant willow tree of a girlfriend is being the most deadbeat wife ever—”

“You two got married? Jeeze, Mel, I’ve only been gone for a few days.”

“It’s for school!”

“—I need help deciding which outfit I should buy for Ginny Jr.”

“And you had a kid?”

“We’re not calling her Ginny Jr.”

“Well it’s better than Baby Splice!”

“You guys, there’s a very simple solution to this,” Cozette said.

“Cut the baby in half and the one who cries the most is given the title of the real mom who has real naming powers?” Ginny suggested. “Because I’m very good at crying.”

“What? No! Obviously you should name her Cozette.”

Ginny rolled her eyes and Melanie burst out laughing.

“That is some messed up Freudian shit,” Mel said.

“Most of Freud is messed up. And fine, don’t name your baby after me. See if I bother coming back from Bali at all. Maybe I’ll just stay here and study the coral reef for the rest of my life.”

“Your feet are too itchy,” Mel countered. “You wouldn’t be able to stay there for long. And we both know you can’t resist the way I—”

“Not in front of the baby!” Ginny clapped her hands over the robot’s tiny, non-functional ears. “It’s one thing to be a deadbeat mother, but it’s another thing altogether to be an openly cheating one.”

“She’s got a point, Mel. I’m afraid that now I know you have a wife and child, there’s only one thing I can do—I release you, my darling.”

“I knew watching _Carol_ with you was a bad idea.”

Ginny, who had insisted on watching the movie with them so that she could understand Mel’s newfound “culture,” found the reference hilarious. “Cozette, how would you like to be our long distance third wife?”

“I would be honored, Virginia.”

“Don’t _I_ get a say in this?”

“Are you saying you don’t want to be in a three-way marriage with me and your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, Mel, are you saying that our tryst meant nothing to you?”

“Fine, fine!” Melanie relented. “We can be in a three-way marriage. Maybe don’t write about that in our final reflections, though. Mr. Beckstead might have a heart attack.”

“Agreed,” Ginny said. “Now, wife number two, which onesie would be most fitting for our child?”

“Personally, I like the—”

“Wait, does that make me wife number one or wife number three then?”

“Oh my god, _Mel_.”

“I’m just saying, these kinds of things matter. And will little Baby Splice—”

“—Ginny Jr.—”

“—call me Mom or Mama or Mommy?”

They spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure that one out. It would have taken even longer if Truly hadn’t approached them and asked—her tone polite, her face on the edge of crazy—if they wouldn’t mind taking their weird teenager conversation elsewhere because she was working on a very important dress for a very important person and their talking had already made her stab herself in the leg with a pin three times and, frankly, the next leg she might accidentally stab would not be her own.

“So _please_ pick an outfit. I’ll give you thirty percent off if you just scoot!”

“Of course,” said Ginny with her best diplomatic smile. “We’ll just be one more minute. This is the moment of truth, wives. Which onesie will set Ginny Jr.—”

“—Baby Splice—”

“—apart from all of the other fake babies?”

There was a moment of silence as they all contemplated the two choices in front of them—tiny blazer onesie or duck-covered onesie?

“That one,” said Cozette, pointing at the one that looked like a blazer.

“That one?” Mel repeated.

“That one!” Ginny squealed.

 

+++++

 

“I can’t get him to stop crying!” Boo called into Sasha’s kitchen. “I’ve done everything; changed his diaper, fed him, swaddled him, rocked him, everything short of tearing out his stupid robot baby voice box. And he still won’t stop!”

Sasha gave her white sauce a quick stir, then went to Boo’s aid. Boo handed the baby over to her willingly, a miserable expression on her face. Not willing to let her cooking go to pot on account of one screaming school assignment, Sasha was back at the stovetop, Jeremy in one hand, the wooden spoon in the other. Jeremy stopped his godawful screeching.

“How did you _do_ that?” Boo lamented. She perched on a stool and watched Sasha enviously.

“Babies can smell fear,” said Sasha. “He knew you were nervous with him, so he acted accordingly.”

“He’s not even real!”

Sasha shrugged. “Robots. What can you do? Maybe they’re more like humans than the movies make them out to be.” She held the spoon out to Boo. “Here, taste this.”

Boo blew on the sauce before putting it in her mouth. “Mmm.”

“Does it need anything?”

“It’s perfect.”

Sasha made a face. “It can’t be perfect. Nothing is perfect, and since it’s a low-calorie white sauce, by nature it’s about as far from perfect as you can get.” She got a taste for herself. “Needs more pepper.”

“Whatever you say, Sasha.”

After giving a few quick measured dashes of pepper to the pan, Sasha glanced back at Boo.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“That is so not true. You’re being weirdly uptight about this assignment, even for you. What’s up?”

“Do you think I’d be a bad mom?” Boo asked in a rush.

Sasha gave the sauce one last stir before removing it from the burner. She placed Jeremy in his baby carrier, which was on top of the counter, and gave Boo a long look.

“Because you said that if I had my way, Jeremy would be naked all weekend,” Boo said before Sasha had the chance to say anything.

Comprehension dawned on Sasha’s face and she gave an easy, if somewhat exasperated, smile.

“Relax, Boo, I was making a joke. I just meant that you don’t care about what Jeremy’s wearing, you’ll still love him all the same.”

“But what if I don’t love him?”

“It was a figure of speech. No one’s expecting you to love your three day robot baby.”

Clearly the clothes comment wasn’t the only thing bothering Boo. Sasha cast an appraising glance at the vegetables steaming on the stove and made the decision to try to figure out what was at the root of her friend’s anxiety.

“Yes, but things go so much more smoothly if you love what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, but it’s an assignment for a high school health class. We could probably show up with the baby missing an arm on Monday and still get an A. It isn’t that difficult.”

“But what if it’s like a way to predict the future?”

“A future where all of our offspring is made of plastic and metal?” Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Sounds very Asimovian.”

“No, like the future the future. Our futures. If I don’t get a good grade on this project…”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll be a bad mom,” finished Sasha. “Is that what this is all about? Boo, you’re the most nurturing person I know. Remember that time you ended up with that baby in the movie truck? That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been who you are.”

“You were the one who got it back to its parents.”

Sasha waved that aside. “If you turn out to be a bad mom, none of the rest of us should be allowed to procreate. Especially me.”

“That’s not true,” Boo protested. “Look at you—you’re cooking and taking care of a baby at the same time! I can barely do one at a time.”

“It’s not a real baby and it’s not a very hard recipe.”

Boo struggled to find the words she needed to make Sasha understand the depth of her worries.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for motherhood,” she confessed.

“You’re seventeen, Boo. I don’t think anyone is at our age.”

“No, but I mean later. It’s just… With my mom and the new baby and my dad and my other little brother, things are always crazy. I pitch in because I don’t want my mom to have to do everything by herself, but even with my help she’s always overwhelmed. And the little I do isn’t very much, but it’s still really hard to juggle school and friends and ballet and Carl. I don’t…” Boo passed her eyes over Sasha’s face quickly, testing for any sort of judgment. “I don’t want to be a mom.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Boo wanted more than just a one word answer. “But shouldn’t I want to be?”

“Biologically? Sure. But if both your brain and your heart aren’t into the idea, so what? There are other people who will have kids. I’m sure our species will survive. You’ll be a kick-ass dancer. And if you decide that you want kids later, great. If not, also great. It isn’t the fifties, Boo. You have other options besides getting married and having two and a half kids.”

“I guess…”

“That’s the spirit. Now, are you gonna help me eat this amazing dinner or am I going to have to share it with our toothless son?”

 


End file.
